One of the features of the neighborhood where I grew up was bar ditches. These were drainage ditches dug on each side of the road.
In them, my friends and I found bullfrogs, crawdads, snakes and various types of minnows. You never knew what you’d find in a bar ditch. With that in mind, it was important to us to check out the bar ditches on both sides of the road.
Although we checked them out, we didn’t want to wade into them, because that’s where you got stuck. That was also where the broken bottles were.
I often think of those bar ditches anytime I encounter ditch thinking. Ditch thinking is a form of negative thinking that can keep people from taking risks and achieving their dreams.
It happens when your mind goes from one extreme to the other.
Like the bar ditches of my youth, with ditch thinking, you are stuck in the middle of one ditch or the other. Where I see ditch thinking is when dealing with affair relapse.
Spouses like yourself alternate between enabling and micromanaging. You either allow the cheater to continue their misbehaving or go to the other extreme and try controlling everything. You may even engage in what is now termed overthinking.
The result is the same, you are both stuck in a ditch with no way out. If you want to move forward and get unstuck, you need to start thinking differently.
By taking the step to limit everything, you attempt limiting their access to money, who they talk to, where they go and keep guard over them as if you were their personal penitentiary watchdog.
When going through that part of affair recovery, going to either extreme has its dangers. Each of those extremes gives you short term relief, but long term lasting change isn’t possible with either of them.
Ditch thinking is a form of all-or-nothing thinking that sets you up for failure before you even start.
Stopping the affair doesn’t end the affair. The old thinking, fantasies and routines associated with the affair need changing as well.
In the video, “Overcoming Affair Relapse”, I go over ways of handling these challenges, so that you don’t get stuck in the pattern of ditch thinking. There are better ways of handling the risk of affair relapse.
You can learn what to look for and what to prepare when it comes to affair relapse. You don’t have to be surprised or caught off guard again. Click and download the video today.
Keeping It Real,
Jeff
